Captivate - GPS Issues

Captivate - GPS Issues

Anyone else experiencing basically no GPS lock?

I've seen it mentioned in plenty of other forums, but not here. I've tried all kinds of fixes and settings and the GPS on my unit is basically useless. I can get a very poor lock using just the wireless networks, but GPS never locks.

Re: Captivate - GPS Issues

Are you running a early i9000 rom? If you are, you should expect gps issues, Anyone running a rom leaked more than five or six months ago is going to have issues most likely. There was no gps fix in the washer at this point, and devs were implementing their own fixes. I had really good luck with GPS while running later Cognition roms not so much with any of the earlier ones. The froyo I am running now is the leak from the beginning of october and other than some glitchy apps this GPS works fine, and produced same results on two other captivates, most important is that it is untouched by Devs, which for me means there is no outside GPS tweaks involved. I am not saying that there is anything final but samsung is not going to release anything at this point that is not a fix. The multiple instances of GPS failure you are speaking of are off of many different froyo leaks of course there will be no consistency. Also most people should not have to do any testing to their phone, its the beauty of buying a new phone, anyone who launches a gps app should have it work for them. I am not doubting your knowledge of phones but I think you are summing up an entire market based on a few hacked roms and a thousand people who have mixed results based on mixed roms. I am on XDA all the time and have had my first captivate since release day, and been closely following this since. One last thing NO report you have read has anything official, You most likely read the same crap I do and it all comes from blogs and opinion samsung has not released a single comment other than some open ended apologies and a couple of update coming soon stories.

Re: GPS fix?

Tyler,

I am not being sarcastic here, bou may have actually stumbled onto the needle in the haystack that they have been looking for in their debugging of this problem. You should really (PLEASE!!!) call Samsung tech support and ask to talk to a level 3 tech and tell him/her what you have found. Debugging this issue must be a total nightmare with all of the different combinations of apps/settings/actions taken by the people who had problems.

Re: Captivate - GPS Issues

I can’t believe it’s actually working better than ever!!! After going through two phones, multiple tips & tricks to improve GPS performance the "GSM Hard Reset" actually worked. Now I am ecstatic that I can say my GPS works super smooth in City, Highway, Rural areas. I have been testing it out in the city, setting my destination and purposely going of route. With each turn the Google Nav was on point, and before I could reach the end of the block it had already recalculated the route. I was actually astonished to see Google Maps lock on to the satellites within about 10 seconds after a reboot, and with in 4 after initial GPS fix. I used to place the phone in my cradle under my windshield, then wait (not moving) sometimes 2 minutes or longer before it would fix. After the "GSM Hard Reset" it actually locked onto satellites while still in my hand, before I could get it in the dock. Now after I received the JH7 update my GPS was still wonky, but much better than before JH7. The issue with update feature in menu returning "Could not connect AT&T Server" is gone. It actually checked for an OTA update and returned "No Updates". I saw several post and video from end users saying that this also improved their devices. However before I trusted just some guy off the net, I tweeted @GalaxySsupport. They told me it was no guarantee but they have seen a lot of users have success with a factory reset. This is preformed with the dialer not the settings menu. It will erase everything from the phone (internal SD also), so make sure you back up you stuff to your expandable SD if you have one/PC if not. BE SURE TO REMOVE SD CARD & SIM!!!

Tweet @GalaxySsupport for full instructions on twitter. Trust me it really works, and was well worth the time!!!

Re: GPS fix?

Zandora wrote:

You remove "early adopter" when at Captivate II. Basically, if the first time you buy a product you buy the 2nd generation of that product then you're not considered an early adopter.

Thats what I was pointing out. A name is a name.... Samsung has been making the product (GPS Cell phones) for a very long time. One might say that the captivate is a keybordless 3rd version of the Behold / Moment / Captivate.

Re: GPS fix?

Just wanted to give an update. I just got off the phone with a Samsung Rep and they said that “GPS fix is in the final phases of testing and should be available for download and via carrier transmission this month” This will mark the 4th gps fix push by Samsung. I went back and forth with her about what if the problem is Hardware and not software. She would not budge saying that “this can only be a software issue.”

I met someone else over the weekend with a captivate and theirs locked on in seconds and held the lock as we drove down a few blocks to a coffee house via Google nav. That said, I no longer doubt that others have perfect/semi perfect working GPS on their phones. I just know that many still do not. This deeply concerns me. All things the same software wise how could some work and some not?

Anyone with a working captivate, what was its manufacture date… I’m wondering if they

A) had a bad batch of gps chips

B) had a batch of gps chips from a different manufacture and didn’t write the code correctly for the 2nd batch.

Re: GPS fix?

skahead wrote:

Just wanted to give an update. I just got off the phone with a Samsung Rep and they said that “GPS fix is in the final phases of testing and should be available for download and via carrier transmission this month” This will mark the 4th gps fix push by Samsung. I went back and forth with her about what if the problem is Hardware and not software. She would not budge saying that “this can only be a software issue.”

I met someone else over the weekend with a captivate and theirs locked on in seconds and held the lock as we drove down a few blocks to a coffee house via Google nav. That said, I no longer doubt that others have perfect/semi perfect working GPS on their phones. I just know that many still do not. This deeply concerns me. All things the same software wise how could some work and some not?

Anyone with a working captivate, what was its manufacture date… I’m wondering if they

A) had a bad batch of gps chips

B) had a batch of gps chips from a different manufacture and didn’t write the code correctly for the 2nd batch.

I'd like to know the same and the firmware & rev level of the working Captivates as well.

Re: Captivate - GPS Issues

The idea of a bad lot of GPS chips occurred to me early on. Let us all just hope that Samsung (and AT&T) are savy enough to get the lot number/firmware/hardware numbers off of the phones that are returned as not having a working GPS so that they can figure out what the possible source of the problem is. It's basic debugging, but sometimes folks don't do it, thinking that it will always be a hardware problem.

Re: GPS fix?

Samsung has released a new app in the Android market... search for "GPSRestore Samsung" it claims to address some of the GPS issues for Vibrant & Captivate. I have D/L and installed the app and it does seem to make a difference in the GPS acquisition and lock times. The real test will be is the accuracy and tracking improved?

Re: GPS fix?

[ Edited ]

The app description says it restores the original GPS config file if it has been modified by lbsTestMode. So, what it does is reset you back to orginal state. The only reason you use lbsTestMode to change settings is because the original settings doesn't give you satisfactory GPS performance in the first place. So, this is useless for obvious reason.

The GPS issue is beyond what a simple settings change can fix. If it were so, Samsung could come up with a fix 3 months ago.

Re: GPS fix?

[ Edited ]

Just got off the line with a level 3 tech in Texas (not India.) He said that Samsungs Froyo fixes the issue; however Froyo has introduced a plethora of errors in other parts of the phone and they are currently working out the bugs. He would not lock into a date of release but said that he already has it on his phone and has a feeling it will be this month. This leaves me to believe that Samsung gave up on fixing the issue in 2.1 and put their focus to rewrite the drivers for 2.2. It also leads me to believe we will never get 3.0.